Tivo won't boot anymore

I already posted this in the underground, but thought I would double dip and see if any of you above ground experts had some ideas. Pardon me if this is not allowed.

I upgraded my Phillips HDR212 to a single 300 GB drive with a 300MB cache(as suggested in the instructions). That all went smoothly and I have been using it for about a month. I've probably got 100 programs or so saved for about 80 hours or so total (most are kids shows for my little couch potatos). Last night I went to watch it, hit the left arrow like I always do and got the 'your subscription is out' message like I do every day (I don't subscribe to the service). The odd thing was, that the subscription message and the next 2 screens (Tivo central and Now Playing) both displayed over the program that was 'live', and not the Orange or Green background. Anyway, when I got to Now Playing and tried to pick a progam, the arrow keys stopped responding, as did all other buttons on the remote. After waiting for something to happen, I finally just rebooted the unit by powering down. Now it powers up to the 'Tivo is starting, please stand by' screen and that is where she stops.

I haven't cracked the cover yet and removed the HD, but I can hear it spin up and start reading and the fan is blowing cool air out of the unit.

Any suggestions (other than just replacing the HD....I want to hold off on that until last resort as the HD is only a month old) to test or fix this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Bill

 

I did not run 'copykern' on the original restore, I didn't see that in any of the upgrade instructions. Is there a way to repair it without deleting my recordings? Also, I do only have a 150 MB cache....I typo'd the 300 MB, sorry.

I do have some info to update this. I went out and got 2 200GB drives (they didn't have a 300GB drive replacement at Worst Buy). My plan was just to get everything over to a dual drive system, and pull the video off to tape over the next few days and try to reload my 300 GB drive back from the original backup like I did previously. When I tried to do a "A drive to A+B drive full backup" as instructed in the Hinsdale tutorial it will not allow me to complete the process and says that there is not enough room on the drives for the backup. I did load up one of the 200GB drives off the original backup and that was fine, but I could not do it from my 300GB drive backup I made with MFStools tonight.

I need some ideas as I was on vacation last week and want....no NEED to see some of my shows I recorded. I have started looking into getting them through the methods not discussed here, but would rather just transfer my recordings to another drive, or figure out a way to repair the kernel on the 300GB and just leave everything in tact.

I did see some info out on the web regarding dd_rescue and copying just the partitions over 10 (I guess this is where the shows are stored) to a new drive. I'd go for that since I do know that the Tivo is still good and I've already got a replacement drive working.

Please anyone....I'll take any suggestions you might have. I'm down 2 weeks of Lost, the Shield and the first 4 hours of 24 (bad week for this to happen).

Thanks,
Bill